Butter or Margarine..

[billybags]

I thought I would share this with you! Believe what you want. I always eat butter what do you eat?




Pass The Butter .. Please.     

         This is interesting . .. .

Margarine  was originally manufactured to fatten  turkeys.  When it killed the turkeys, the people who had put  all the money into the research wanted a payback so they put their  heads together to figure out what to do with this product to get  their money back.
It was a white substance with no food appeal  so they added the yellow colouring and sold it to people to use in place of butter.  How do you like it?   They have come out  with some clever new flavourings..   

 DO  YOU KNOW.. The difference between margarine and butter?   

Read on to the end...gets very interesting!   

Both  have the same amount of calories.

Butter  is slightly higher in saturated fats at 8  grams; compared   to 5 grams for margarine.

Eating margarine can increase  heart disease in women by  53%  over   eating the same amount of butter, according to a recent  Harvard  Medical Study.

Eating butter increases the absorption of many other nutrients found in  other foods.

Butter  has many nutritional benefits where margarine has few and   
only  because  they are added!

Butter  tastes much better than margarine and it can enhance the flavours of  other foods.

Butter  has been around for centuries where margarine has been around for less than 100 years .

And now, for Margarine..

Very High in Trans fatty acids.

Triples risk of coronary heart disease .
Increases  total cholesterol and LDL (this is the bad cholesterol) and  lowers HDL cholesterol, (the good cholesterol)

Increases  the risk of cancers up to five times..

Lowers  quality of breast milk.

Decreases immune response.

Decreases  insulin response.

And  here's the most disturbing fact.. HERE  IS  THE  PART  THAT  IS  VERY INTERESTING!

Margarine  is but ONE  MOLECULE  away  from being PLASTIC... and shares 27 ingredients with PAINT

These facts alone were enough to have me avoiding margarine for life  and anything else that is hydrogenated (this means hydrogen is  added,  changing the molecular structure of the  substance).   

You  can try this yourself:

Purchase  a tub of margarine and leave it open in your garage or shaded  area.  Within a couple of days you will notice a couple of things:

 *  no flies, not even those pesky fruit flies will go near it  (that should tell you something)

 *  it does not rot or smell differently because it has  no nutritional value ; nothing will grow on it. Even those teeny weeny microorganisms will not  find a home to grow.  Why?   Because it is nearly plastic .  Would you melt your Tupperware and  spread that  on your toast?   

Share  This With Your Friends.....(If you want to butter them up')!

Chinese Proverb:  When someone shares something of value with you and you benefit from it,  you have a  moral obligation to share it with  others.   
Pass the BUTTER    PLEASE
       

[Jean]

That is a very interesting post BillyBags. Now I wonder about the "Smart Balance" that I use. Only because of the old rumors that butter is bad for you. Hmmmm, research time.

[YLGuy]

margarine is about a quarter of the price of butter though.

[cariad]

http://www.snopes.com/food/warnings/butter.asp

[fc2821]

  I have always prefered the taste of butter.  My step daughter is always fond of saying "margarine is one molcule away from plastic". Interesting ifo.

[billybags]

cariad, That was really interesting, yes I did get it via e-mail, but I AM STILL GOING TO EAT MY LURPAK BUTTER so there.

[monrein]

I eat butter but very very little of it.  Have never used margarine.

[cariad]

cariad, That was really interesting, yes I did get it via e-mail, but I AM STILL GOING TO EAT MY LURPAK BUTTER so there.

Please do continue to eat butter, billybags, with my blessing!   

monrein, really, never, ever? How did you manage this? I only eat butter now, and cannot remember the last time I had margarine, but I know I once ate it in abundance. It was a fad in the 1970s (and continues to come in and out of fashion, I believe).

I happen to have grown up with a mother who followed (and continues to follow) every food fad imaginable, and most of it is centered around being obsessed with weight loss. (My mother is 5'5" and probably around 125 - the heaviest she has ever been in her life.) At one point, it was all whole wheat - we had no white flour in our home for about 3 years. Ever had whole wheat chocolate chip cookies made with margarine? They taste almost as good as they sound!  Imagine the scene that took place the day she announced to me that she was giving up all wheat products because she had been told that wheat accounts for about 5 lbs of extra weight on an individual. 

Today, I strongly believe that it is none of my business what anyone outside of my household eats, and even then, I try to keep the interference to a minimum. I pity the soul who tries to come at me with their low-fat, low-salt, sugarless, chemical-concoction. I have a short fuse when it comes to what the kids today call "Frakenfood".

[kristina]

Thanks, Billy for that great article.

Whenever I see cakes, cake-buns and that sort of taste-treats

I often wonder, what are the ingredients they use,
 
do they use butter or do they use something else

 "made from something they would not like us to know about"?

[monrein]

Well when I say "never used" I ought to have said "never bought".  I'm sure I've eaten lots of things, including margarine, at other people's houses and I'd not make a fuss about what people serve me to eat.  I like the taste of almost everything that can be eaten but that certainly doesn't mean that I choose to eat everything that crosses my path.  Two quick examples...deep fried twinkies or mars bars.  I see no point, no matter what the taste.   My husband likes olive oil on his veggies and potatoes but I use a tiny bit of butter and lemon juice.
At the hospital here they serve Becel (margarine) with meals but it tastes like someone spread a mixture of moulds on the veggies.  Nasty stuff.
I grew up on a dairy farm in Jamaica and we never used margarine.  I try to eat as healthily as I possibly can and I don't mean from a calorie stand point.  I like my food to be as nutritional as possible and as unprocessed and varied as possible.  I'm with you on the Frankenfood thing but I'm also constantly amazed by what we humans will eat despite knowing how bad something can be for our bodies. 
I've just made masses of Christmas cookies, altogether containing well more than a year's supply of butter for me.  I'll go very easy on eating them too even though they're all natural, preservative free etc.
I'm fascinated by food and our relationships with it.  I ate very unhealthily as a young teen, was overweight and used food as a crutch but have worked hard to change all that and I love good food but am discriminating about what I do eat.  I can't help thinking about the health of my heart and organs and I find that carrying other people's kidneys around in me (I'm on my second one now) makes me feel extremely responsible about what my body must process.

Cariad, my Mum didn't much like food at all since she lived on cigarettes and coffee.  She died at 46 from a melanoma.

[cariad]

Very interesting insights, monrein. I, too, am fascinated by people's relationships with food, and the various food issues that people carry around with them. With me, food very literally destroyed my relationship with my parents. Coming out of the hospital as a child, on massive doses of prednisone, my scientifically illiterate parents put me on a diet of 1000 calories per day for years. Having been forced to endure 'food substitutes' through childhood (fake butter, fake sugar, fake fats, fake food) today, I will avoid doing that to myself or my children at all costs. I'd rather have nothing.

I have two clear, ludicrous food memories from my very young childhood (both post-transplant). One was coming home from a friend's birthday party at a pizza restaurant and being praised shamelessly by my parents for ordering Tab (diet, saccharine filled soda) instead of what I really wanted, milk. The other was my father playing a game with my two older sisters in which they were trying to grab little bites of chocolate mousse from my father's bowl, and I tried to join in, and he wouldn't let me play. He was that terrified of his young daughter ingesting a single, microscopic bite of mousse.

I am pretty particular about food, and definitely would not eat deep-fried candy no matter how pure the ingredient list (wow, I could get nauseated just thinking about that too much) Yet, I would try to not make a big deal out of it if my kids wanted to try it. My husband will eat anything (almost literally). For Christmas, I ordered him a few of those bacon-chocolate bars. This is more for the humor and novelty factor, but I will not be surprised if he likes it. I am terrified that I will absent-mindedly forget that the chocolate has bacon in it and take a bite of it one day (I have been vegetarian for almost 25 years). I am toying with the idea of calling Poison Control and getting them to send me a few of those Mr. Yuck stickers to paste all over the wrapper, as a 'gentle' reminder for me. 

Sad to hear about your mother. When I had viral meningitis about two years ago, could not eat for ten days, could barely walk, thought I was going to die of starvation, and came out of the hospital positively wrecked, my mother looked me up and down and said "You're much thinner than me." That pretty much sums her up.

I love hearing about your food philosophy, monrein, thanks for sharing it. It is such a fundamental part of life, but one that people don't really look at analytically very often.